As the second New Zealand Company settlement, there were high hopes for Nelson. But like its quayside coal-fired power generation scheme, that became a fish processing factory, then a seafood research facility, the city had a way of defying its founders to offer something completely unique.

Magazine

Nov - Dec 2011

The MV Rena left the Port of Napier at 9:40AM, October 4, 2011. Short on time to catch the tide in Tauranga, the container ship passed so close to the smaller 14,000-tonne tanker MV Torea, that the master of that vessel was forced to alter course as they overtook, eventually completing a full 360º turn. On the bridge of the Rena, the second officer followed a course around East Cape and turned off White Island, travelling just faster than the ship’s maximum listed speed of 17.7 knots. Below, the captain was celebrating his 44th birthday.
Just over an hour from port, the Automatic Identification System—which broadcasts the position, course and speed of the vessel—indicated an unusual change of course. Instead of sailing to the planned waypoint, the officer of the watch had cut the corner to head directly for the pilot radar beacon at the harbour mouth. The decision had put the ship on a collision course with one of the most notorious maritime hazards on the North Island’s east coast.
At 2:18 AM, October 5, travelling at 17.8 knots, the MV Rena came to a sudden, shuddering halt as 47,000 tonnes of steel and cargo met the volcanic rock of Astrolabe Reef.
By morning, the extent of the problem became obvious. The hull was badly damaged, and oil was leaking into the sea from ruptured fuel tanks carrying 1700 tonnes of heavy bunker fuel.
Maritime New Zealand and the commissioned salvage company Svitzer scrambled to mitigate damage, spraying dispersants (also toxic) on surface oil from helicopters and pumping the oil, first to other tanks on the stricken vessel, then 10 days later into a bunkering barge brought from Auckland.
If the scale of the disaster hadn’t been immediately obvious to Tauranga’s residents, they were left under no illusion as a black tide of toxic oil began washing up on the beachfront. Containers, thrown from the now unstable hulk upon the reef, disgorged meatpacks and freeze-dried coffee. Birds cloaked in black shrouds littered the golden sand.
It made for an apocalyptic scene not unlike press coverage of environmental disasters once thought far-distant from clean, green New Zealand—such as the Deepwater Horizon well which spewed 780 million litres of oil into the Gulf of Mexico last year. While that disaster was orders of magnitude larger than the Rena spill, and from a quite different source, the public quickly joined the dots between oil on their coast and prospecting for oil currently underway in deep water off both coasts of the North Island. (In a badly timed arrival, a survey ship for Anadarko—an owner of BP’s ill-fated Deepwater Horizon—docked in Port Taranaki the same week to begin prospecting in what is known as the Deepwater Taranaki Basin. Two of the three prospective sites in the 32,830 sqkm area are as deep or deeper than Deepwater Horizon.)
In the January/February issue of New Zealand Geographic there will be a comprehensive feature on the Rena disaster and the ideological decisions refreshed again in the minds of New Zealanders living in the era of internal combustion. Beginning on page eight of this issue, Tauranga-based marine biologist Kim Westerskov presents a sobering visual analysis of all that has been lost, and that which remains at risk in the great bight.
The Rena was just one of some 500 ships to call at the Port of Tauranga each year without incident. More than 99 per cent of New Zealand’s imports and exports—42 million tonnes—are transported by sea. Shipping is superbly efficient, and releases almost ten times less CO2 per tonne-kilometre than road transport. Part of New Zealand’s mitigation of human-induced climate change involves actually increasing the proportion of cargo transported by sea.
So while it’s easy to blame multinational petroleum corporations or commercial shipping, in an economy still powered by petroleum, the only things linking the two industries are the common commodity, and the end consumer. Every one of us is culpable.

Sales manager Darryl Maclean is a happy man as another section sells in Pegasus, a residential development 25 km north of Christchurch. Designed around a lake and within minutes of the shores of Pegasus Bay, the town is promoted as a place to “live where you play”, but not everyone shares the developer’s enthusiasm.

According to one Maori legend there were five brothers, Manaia, Maungaraho, Tokatoka, Motowhitiki and Taungatara, who were disillusioned with their lives in Hawaiki. Under cover of darkness they decided to follow the path of the great explorer Kupe and travel to Aotearoa. At dawn the mighty Atua took away their powers of motion, stranding them in their present resting places.
Manaia, Maungaraho, Tokatoka and Motowhitiki all lie in a straight line to Ripiro Beach, where Taungatara, the smallest peak, stands. The songs and legends of Ngapuhi and Ngati Whatua remember this story.
Another Maori legend accounts for the five peaks on the summit ridge relating to Manaia and his family. The largest peak represents Manaia himself, the smaller pinnacles are his children, while the last figure is his unfaithful wife, turning her head away in shame.
Mt Manaia is the eroded skeleton of an andesite cone, erupted 22–16 million years ago. The layers of andesitic breccia are visible on the summit ridge and rocks in the matrix are visibly exposed on the sides of the pinnacles.
Rare plant communities adorn the slopes, with parapara, large leaf milk tree and native angelica being some of the more notable species. The exposed rocky ridge has examples of mountain daisy, native forget-me-not and sprawling pomaderis.
Much of the plant and birdlife is shared with the Three Kings, Hen and Chickens and Poor Knights Island groups.
TRACK NOTES
The track is marked with orange triangles and is uneven and steep. It takes approximately 45 minutes to the signposted Bluff Lookout. This two-minute detour takes you to an opening in the forest at the top of an exposed rock face. Take extreme care while admiring the view as the wind can be gusty.
The final ascent to the summit takes approximately 15 minutes. A wooden staircase leads to a flat rock area below the main pinnacles. There is no access to the trig at the summit.
An alternative route is signposted from the top and drops very steeply, sometimes aided with a steel cable to steady the descent. This takes 45 minutes and arrives at the start of the track.

In 1993 Brett Phibbs began shooting for the New Zealand Herald. “I love shooting for a newspaper,” he says at a gallery opening in Devonport for his workmate, friend and last year’s New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year, Richard Robinson. “There’s something about the speed that you move at. You work hard and fast on one job, then you’re on to something new.”
But despite the rush, a hallmark of Phibbs’ photography is his attention to human detail. He photographed June Hillary, tenderly touching the casket of her late husband at the state funeral in his honour. An immaculate portrait of broadcaster Tony Veitch, charged with assault, riddled with angst, contemplating an imminent press conference. A 100-metre hurdler frozen in strain and motion over the gates at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. A wicketkeeper and a salvo of slips poised in whites upon Eden Park’s verdant pitch. They are studies of still life, even as it hurtles past.
But if professional circumstances demand that Phibbs stand behind a cordon of security with a gallery of his media contemporaries, his natural inclination is quite different. When given the freedom, Phibbs’ default setting seems to be close and wide. He stands inches from his subject with his widest lens on its widest angle, evaluates natural light, composes—his subject artfully offset—and shoots, point blank.
“Zoom lenses make you lazy,” he says. “You don’t move towards your subject or engage with it.”
His most widely circulated image is arguably that of protester—later MP—Sue Bradford, being hauled by police from a demonstration by her ears. It was a frame he had anticipated, even if Bradford hadn’t, and had positioned himself right next to her.
Phibbs’ poignant and sometimes gruesome images of the 2009 Samoan tsunami exemplify this approach, revealing both the horror of the event and the human emotion surrounding it. In one frame the corpse of a young girl lies muddy and limp at the feet of workers and military personnel in the tray of a ute. Her grandfather and another family member bless and farewell her. It was a photograph he shot with camera in hand and arm extended above his head.
“You can always take beautiful pictures of horrific things,” says Phibbs, at pains to point out that photographers are not immune from suffering that comes natural disasters.
Though almost all of his photography to date has been for a daily newspaper, Phibbs remains determined that motivation for the art of photography can only ever come from within.
“It doesn’t matter which publication you’re shooting for,” he says, “you only ever shoot for yourself, because it’s your name under the photograph.”